“Magic City” Season 2 recently premiered on STARZ, as Ike Evans (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) attempts to escape the underworld of the Miami hotel and nightclub scene in 1959. James Caan joins the cast this season as Chicago crime boss, Sy Berman and Ike even goes to Cuba!
We sat down with “Magic City” creator Mitch Glazer at the Television Critics Association press tour to get the scoop on season two, and a question about his early screenwriting credit. Somehow we get into spoilers for “Game of Thrones” season one and “Boardwalk Empire,” just in case you need a warning.
CraveOnline: With season two were you able to hit the ground running?
Mitch Glazer: In a storytelling and work sense, absolutely. I had, in my mind, set the table with the first season, introduced the world to these characters and I was champing at the bit to hit second season and be able to unleash these people on the world, these characters on the world. It went by in a blur. We got there in September and wrapped December 22 and did eight shows in that time. Eight shows that look and feel like eight movies, like last season. They’re just gorgeous and deep and I think, truthfully, as big as anything I’ve ever seen on television. They really are something.
Did you take any of the season one feedback to heart? Some people thought it might have been a little too slow developing.
Yes and no, meaning most of what I read said that the last four episodes, things really took off in the storytelling or whatever. In my mind, I’m very connected to the first episode. I wrote it seven years ago and I always loved it, but part of the mission of it is to introduce seven or eight characters that are going to run through the length of the season. There’s an, I guess, not pace but you have to honor storytelling and bringing these people into the world. So maybe to some people it felt slow. The basic look of the show as far as the camerawork, we don’t use steadicam.
I embraced a more formal style of shooting for the show which is dollies and dance floor, which is moving on a smooth surface, or cranes and all that, which harkens back to another period of filmmaking, more like a ‘70s style. The show still has that kind of cinematic feel to me. I think the pace of the storytelling might have increased, possibly subconsciously by reading those things, but more importantly because I now am allowed to take these characters that people have met and take them to places. I don’t have to remind people who they are and introduce them. I can actually put them in motion.
And we lament today that shows have to be so fast today because they might not have time to to establish the groundwork. Did you take advantage of the knowledge that STARZ wasn’t going to pull you before eight?
I was probably delusional, but I was confident we’d have a second season from the beginning. I knew Chris Albrecht was connected to the show, enjoying what I was writing and he loved the cast and the look, so I kind of felt that I had the time to roll this world out and these stories out. I don’t know what the normal one hour drama is as far as number of scenes, but I think it’s around 40 or so. We have 60 so we’re moving in these episodes. It might not feel like it because of the style of the shooting, but there are a lot of different places that you go in every one of these episodes and a lot of stories are being told.
I preface this by saying I’m nowhere comparing us to that, but I watched The Godfather again on the way home, I was saying to Jimmy [Caan] on the plane, and the pace of it and the confidence of the storytelling is something to aspire to. I don’t feel compelled to use cutty handheld dynamics to jazz up the episodes. I really want them to have more of a formal elegant feel to them, and they do.
Was it really time to go into Cuba in season two?
It felt like it to me. My father used to do work down there. He’s an electrical engineer. He did all the lighting for the hotels, and weirdly, the chandelier that’s in the lobby, our lobby of the Miramar Playa was one that he specced for the Eden Roc Hotel in ’57 I think. So he went down to Cuba in that period often. He went down there twice to supervise the assembling of the chandelier, but I grew up with a father who it was no big deal.
In this window of time, from March to September which is where the show lands in ’59, Castro was accepted by the American government. He was here fundraising, went on “Meet the Press,” stayed in New York so it was a time when American businessmen did and could go down to Havana and try to connect with the government. It ended in October or around there when Castro became aligned with Russia, apparently spurned by us and then [he] went to Russia. So that was over, but for that weird window which is when the second season takes place, it was something that was happening so I thought, “God, what a great thing to explore. Castro has chased the mob out and he’s got these beautiful casino and hotels sitting there empty. Ike Evans would see that and go, ‘There’s opportunity.’”
Jeffrey has told me in previous interviews that he wouldn’t put it past you to kill Ike in season two. Did you ever consider that?
Never. Not for a blink. He’s insane. Maybe, because he works so often, maybe there are moments during the course of the season he would go, “Please, Mitch, kill me.”
No, he meant it would be good drama and he meant it humbly, he’d be willing to go for the sake of the show.
He’s the best. He is the dream partner for me. The number one on the call sheet has so much influence with the other cast members and with the production, so that his willingness to work long hours or whatever it is, and Jeff has always been there for me, makes the show possible. You’re right, he would sacrifice himself, the actor, the character if he thought it was great for the show but I love working with him.
So then it’s on you to make sure that keeping Ike around is even better for the show than a shocking death.
Yes, and by the way, should the storytelling take me in any place, he’s absolutely right. It’s one of the obligations of my job, it seems, is to really honor the world. By killing off the lead in “Game of Thrones” or a character on “Boardwalk Empire,” it’s just bracing. It’s so f***ing electric.
I think we all saw it coming on “Game of Thrones” though.
Well, those that knew the books.
I had a feeling Sean Bean only signed on for one season.
Interesting. For me, I was watching it through my daughter’s eyes because she’s 26 and said, “You’ve got to see this.” To me, he’s the center of the show, but it’s what makes this format, premium cable series, so attractive to a writer. You can do anything. Michael Pitt. So he’s not wrong. To service the show, I’d hate it, but I’d have to do it.
